Unethical Behavior in Organizations

Many organizations spend great amount of resources to implement a set of ethics for employees to follow. However, the concept of what is culturally acceptable behavior, too often, is not aligned with organization’s intended ethics. As result, this paper explores the impact of unethical behavior, and the effects on the workforce. The intent is to reveal the benefits of business research and how this tool can unravel innovative solutions to dealing with unethical behavior. Organizational led unethical behavior can lead to mass fatalities. An example of this behavior is the recent outbreak of meningitis through spinal injections. According to "The New York Times" (2012), " The rising toll — 7 dead, 57 ill and thousands potentially exposed — has cast a harsh light on the loose regulations that legal experts say allowed a company to sell 17,676 vials of an unsafe drug to pain clinics in 23 states.” (Scant Oversight of Drug Maker in Fatal Meningitis Outbreak). The outbreak is attributed to the rising costs of this injection made by major manufactures, which led the New England Compounding Center to create a generic version by mixing up their own drug batches for much lesser price and with minimum federal safety oversight. This proves the New England Compounding Center’s negligence and complete disregard to public safety by knowingly creating a commonly used injection for spinal pain, and making it available for public use without formal testing. Another example from an individual aspect of unethical behavior is the case of Annie Dookhan. Dookhan worked as a crime lab chemist for the state of Massachusetts. She was well-regarded and respected among her peers for her ability to test nearly four times the amount of drug samples compared to a typical chemist. However, despite her accomplishments, supervisors began to raise suspicions of her achievements and initiated an investigation. As result, it was later discovered...